“Look. The Mississippi is very broad. The Rocky Mountains really swing. I just can’t get too turned-on about cops bopping hippies on the head and the Pentagon playing cowboys and Indians all over the globe. That’s what your little sticker means to me. It means screw the blacks and send the CIA into Greece.”

“If we don’t send somebody in the other side sure as hell will, the Greeks can’t seem to manage the show by themselves.”

“Harry, don’t make yourself ridiculous, they invented civilization,” Janice says. To Stavros she says, “See how little and tight his mouth gets when he thinks about politics.”

“I don’t think about politics,” Rabbit says. “That’s one of my Goddam precious American rights, not to think about politics. I just don’t see why we’re supposed to walk down the street with our hands tied behind our back and let ourselves be blackjacked by every thug who says he has a revolution going. And it really burns me up to listen to hotshot crap-car salesmen dripping with Vitalis sitting on their plumped-up asses bitching about a country that’s been stuffing goodies into their mouth ever since they were born.”

Charlie makes to rise. “I better go. This is getting too rich.”

“Don’t go,” Janice begs. “He doesn’t know what he’s saying. He’s sick on the subject.”

“Yeah, don’t go, Charlie, stick around and humor the madman.”

Charlie lowers himself again and states in measured fashion, “I want to follow your reasoning. Tell me about the goodies we’ve been stuffing into Vietnam.”

“Christ, exactly. We’d turn it into another Japan if they’d let us. That’s all we want to do, make a happy rich country full of highways and gas stations. Poor old LBJ, Jesus, with tears in his eyes on television, you must have heard him, he just about offered to make North Vietnam the fifty-first fucking state of the damn Union if they’d just stop throwing bombs. We’re begging them to rig some elections, any elections, and they’d rather throw bombs. What more can we do? We’re trying to give ourselves away, that’s all our foreign policy is, is trying to give ourselves away to make little yellow people happy, and guys like you sit around in restaurants moaning, ‘Jesus, we’re rotten.’ ”

“I thought it was us and not them throwing the bombs.”

“We’ve stopped; we stopped like all you liberals were marching for and what did it get us?” He leans forward to pronounce the answer clearly. “Not shit.”

The whispering couple across the room look over in surprise; the family two booths away have hushed their noise to listen. Nelson is desperately blushing, his eyes sunk hot and hurt in his sockets. “Not shit,” Harry repeats more softly. He leans over the tablecloth, beside the trembling daisies. “Now I suppose you’re going to say ‘napalm.’ That frigging magic word. They’ve been burying village chiefs alive and tossing mortars into hospitals for twenty years, and because of napalm they’re candidates for the Albert F. Schweitzer peace prize. S, H, it.” He has gotten loud again; it makes him frantic, the thoughts of the treachery and ingratitude befouling the flag, befouling him.